Conrad Starguard - The Radiant Warrior Part 25

It was a good party, and I had the feeling that most of my new knights would be married in the near future, or they would if the girls had anything to say about it, and they generally do.

FROM THE DIARY OF PIOTR KULCZYNSKI.

My love was at my side as the party got under way. I was introducing her to my cla.s.smates and in the process saying good-bye to them. Baron Conrad was a.s.signing me to head up a section of mapmakers while they would be back here training new troops. We would meet again, but not soon and not often. It was hard, for we had gone through h.e.l.l and Heaven together, and in the doing of it, we had become close.

I had attended to half of them when a surprise occurred. Coming toward us through the crowd was the lady I had had on the night of my knighting! Suddenly, I felt very awkward, for how does one introduce a lady that one has taken in pleasure to another lady that one is about to marry? Worse yet, I couldn't introduce them, for I still did not know the first lady's name!

Yet again, she saved me, for she was a gem of courtesy.

"Piotr Kulczynski., surely you remember little Mary Ponanski that used to live four doors from your father in Okoitz!"

So at last I knew her name! "Of course I remember the little girl that we used to chase away from the big boys' games! But can it be that that skinny little girl is the charming lady I see before me? Oh ho! A duckling has turned into a swan! But then you must know Krystyana, my bride to be," I said, introducing them.

We chatted for a while and Mary pouted a bit because she had recognized me and I had not returned the favor.

"But you are not fair," I said. "Girls change more than boys do, and more pleasantly. But why are you wasting your time with someone who is almost an old married man, when there are so many eligible young knights around?"

"To find out which one I should be chasing, of course I You know all of these men, Piotr. Tell me, which one is the best?"

"The best? Well, that's a complicated question! If you mean 'Who is the best mathematician?' you are out of luck, because that's me and I'm already taken. If you mean 'Who has the best taste in women?' well, that's me, too, since I'm getting Krystyana and they are not! But the best man for you? Let me think. Maybe August Poinowski over there. What do you think, Krystyana? Is August handsome enough for our little Mary? I can testify to his character, but it takes a woman to tell if he is good to look at."

My love said that he was a fine-looking man, so we made the introductions. And you know? Not three weeks went by before Mary and August posted banns to marry in the church!

It was in this manner that I returned to Mary Ponanski the great favor that she had done for me!

FROM THE DIARY OF CONRAD SCHWARTZ.

Sir Piotr's wedding was well attended, and the weather was so fine that they held the reception outside.

While talking to Count Lambert, he suggested that I look up at the sky. I looked. A large, two-place sailplane was circling overhead. The pilot must have found a good thermal above the town, because he kept on circling for hours. So now, in addition to everything else, I had to build an aircraft engine!

FROM THE DIARY OF PIOTR KULCZYNSKI.

And so it was that on a beautiful spring day in the year 1237 1 married my love Krystyana, and we lived happily ever after, or reasonably so.

Interlude Four The tape wound to a stop.

"Good G.o.d, what a training program!" I said. "Conrad should have been a practical psychologist instead of being an engineer! And that graduation ceremony! I can't help wondering why armies in the twentieth century didn't use the same techniques."

"It wouldn't have worked," Tom said. "You must bear in mind that Conrad was working with some very uneducated and naive troops. With a modem education, it takes a pretty weak mind to fall for things like that firewalking stunt. A good modem soldier is a very well educated and superbly well trained specialist.

You don't want stupid troops, not when they have to operate some remarkably sophisticated equipment. But given his situation, cousin Conrad did the right thing. I'm proud of the boy."

"Another thing is that weights and measures system he came up with. I got to working it out during some of the slow parts on the tape."

"Yeah, I saw you playing with the calculator. Did it myself, the first-time I sat through the thing."

"Well, it's flat amazing how many numbers work out tight! The way his mile works out at 1728 of his yards, and his pound comes out at one 1728th of a ton, and even his volt and his pint come out right! All at accuracies better than could be measured with medieval instruments! That's almost too many 'gosh numbers' to believe."

"Well, it wasn't all luck. Conrad was using a base twelve numbering system. It's one of the three natural systems, along with base eight and base sixteen. The ancient Indo-Europeans, our ancestors, used that same base twelve system for many thousands of years, and used it for their own systems of measurements, until some dull person started to count on his fingers and invented the decimal system in the process. A lot of what Conrad was doing was just setting things back to the old, sensible way of doing things."

"But enough of this. Supper is getting cold, and the girls tell me that they have something special planned for tonight's entertainment. Let's close it up!"